Tag: Social Welfare

I spoke with Lillian McCarthy, founder member of Pensioners for Equality. They scored a great victory by militant action, campaigning and protesting. Minister Doherty was forced to acknowledge the justice of their cause. True, back-money is being paid from last…

MORE PUBLIC MONEY WASTED. That’s Minister Doherty’s plan for JOBPATH and the unemployed. She intends renewing the multi million Euro contracts with dodgy companies who got the ‘gig’ last time – private businesses contracted for ‘job activation’ schemes that “patronised..manipulated…

Jobpath is about humiliating and punishing the unemployed, not helping. We are paying private companies millions a year to hound the unemployed into now paying precarious jobs with litle security. The scandal should end now.

JOBPATH IS AN ABUSIVE RIP-OFF. As a private company it’s given public money for thwarting the lives of people looking for work. I had the opportunity to question witnesses at a Dáil committee reviewing an investigation of Jobpath and it…

Before Xmas I queried the Minister about the numbers of people refused carers’ allowance initially, who are then forced to appeal (which takes months) before being accepted. I also asked about the dramatic rise in the numbers of people penalised…

An ERSI report shows that this govt looks after the top earners – not the ‘early risers’ nor the ‘squeezed middle’! Figures show that the last budget left average households WORSE off than before. Lower income housholds lost most. And…

SOCIAL WELFARE BILL 2017 was discussed again in the Dáil today. Gross inequalities in pensions cost some pensioners, mainly women, up to €35 a week; this is as a result of new rules brought in in 2012 by Joan Burton.…

This is the second time I spoke on pensions yesterday (6.12.17) in the Dáil debate on the Social Welfare Bill 2017. We have been promised a report on pensions inequality for the last 9 months and still waiting. Pensioners for…

Some good though minor proposals but major areas of discrimination in this Bill; against young welfare recipients and crucially on the issue of pensions, where new rules discriminate mostly against women, but do down thousands of pensioners by as much…

JOAN BURTON PULLED THE TRIGGER, BUT FIANNA FAIL LOADED THE GUN. The target was pensioners, women pensioners in particular. And now FF have the brass neck to pretend they care about the fact that thousands of mostly women, recently retired…